For his first few seasons, FSN had a tracker showing where Braun ranked on the Most HR to start a career list. Weird that I don't remember doing it for Fielder, but his first season he only hit 28. Or racism.

Babe Ruth hit 15 in his first season as a full-time position player, but he was hardly a rookie by then. And in case you forget how amazing the Babe was, Abreu is slugging .611 after his red-hot start of 41 games... Babe slugged .690 over his 22-year career.

Abreu looks very promising, but he also has the same weakness of a lot of hitters from the Cuban system-- 7 unintentional walks after 177 PA. Even washouts like Kevin Maas (15 UIBB after 152 PA) and Mike Jacobs (15 UIBB in 153 PA) had a decent batting eye during their initial run. Abreu swings hard and has good plate coverage, but sooner or later pitchers are going to stop throwing him anything in the strike zone.

gameshowhost:mediablitz: Kevin Maas. There's a name I hadn't thought about in a long time. The second coming of Don Mattingly.

I remember NY media jizzing their pantaloons over the guy.

Of course they did. It's been a couple decades since the Yankees were bad at baseball, but in 1990 they were 67-95. That's not even regular bad. That's just awful.

Then they had a rookie hit 21 HR (with a .367 OBP, to boot) in less than half a season. He was runner-up for Rookie of the Year while everyone failed to notice Kevin Appier.

Back then, no one really understood defense all that well, so people didn't notice that he was god-awful, even for a 1B (and he had to play defense, because this team also had the ghost of Steve Balboni's career at DH). The fans didn't notice that he hit .164/.273/.313 vs. lefties. Or that his OPS dropped 170 points when he left Yankee Stadium. Or that he hit worse every month. Next year, pitchers exploited his weak spots and he basically evaporated. But in 1990, he was crushing it.

They had been cheering for the team with the worst offense in the AL, with a broken shadow of Don Mattingly hitting .256 with no power. The only good regular was Jesse Barfield. Tim Leary almost became a 20-game loser (despite pitching roughly average baseball... that team didn't score at all).

chimp_ninja:gameshowhost: mediablitz: Kevin Maas. There's a name I hadn't thought about in a long time. The second coming of Don Mattingly.

I remember NY media jizzing their pantaloons over the guy.

Of course they did. It's been a couple decades since the Yankees were bad at baseball, but in 1990 they were 67-95. That's not even regular bad. That's just awful.

Then they had a rookie hit 21 HR (with a .367 OBP, to boot) in less than half a season. He was runner-up for Rookie of the Year while everyone failed to notice Kevin Appier.

Back then, no one really understood defense all that well, so people didn't notice that he was god-awful, even for a 1B (and he had to play defense, because this team also had the ghost of Steve Balboni's career at DH). The fans didn't notice that he hit .164/.273/.313 vs. lefties. Or that his OPS dropped 170 points when he left Yankee Stadium. Or that he hit worse every month. Next year, pitchers exploited his weak spots and he basically evaporated. But in 1990, he was crushing it.

They had been cheering for the team with the worst offense in the AL, with a broken shadow of Don Mattingly hitting .256 with no power. The only good regular was Jesse Barfield. Tim Leary almost became a 20-game loser (despite pitching roughly average baseball... that team didn't score at all).

So yeah, he was a big story in NY.

I hear ya.

/though small market teams understood defense pretty well long before the fat $ markets started to catch on